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Есть Два Цвета: Черный И Белый, А Есть Оттенки, Которых Больше. ('There are two colors: black and white. Others are just shades.') – unknown
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Daily link icon Monday, December 6, 2004

The right way to do titles on the web

To all web developers: Please get your titles right. I don't mean titles of articles, as in headlines, but the HTML <title>s that show up in your browser window title.

For the most part there is only one right way to do titles on the web. The format should work according to the grammar: htmltitle := name separator title, where name is the name of the site, publication, or author, separator is something like '-', ':', or '»', and title is the descriptive title of your post, essay, article, etc. If you want to be clever with your titles ("Lax Styx Wax Clicks") that's cool, there's no need for your titles to be boring. But something like Wow! is usually inadvisable (I've been guilty of that too). This doesn't necessarily apply to every page on the web, but it specifically applies to news sites, weblogs, forums, etc.

Some good examples:

Some bad examples:

Remember that this is what shows up in bookmarks, or links you save, maybe in people's news readers, and most importantly, in my weblog posting window as put there by my blogging bookmarklet.

← Fred Barnes: They Still Haven't Figured [Bush] OutAnn Coulter kicks ass →

Comments XML gif

Wayne (http://dionidium.com) wrote:

I prefer the Signal vs. Noise approach: post/article title first; site title second. This is particularly usable in search results, where I'm usually looking for a particular topic, not a specific site. In such situations I want to scan for words relevant to my search, not blog names.

∴ Wayne | 6-Dec-2004 3:24pm est | http://dionidium.com | #6524

Simon Willison (http://simon.incutio.com/) wrote:

In my experience, the same title for every page on a site can mean that their (possibly hideously expensive) CMS can't actually handle anything more advanced than an include for the header and an include for the footer. Since the title is in the header it has to be the same for every page on the site. Doh!

∴ Simon Willison | 6-Dec-2004 3:53pm est | http://simon.incutio.com/ | #6525

Joe Grossberg (http://www.joegrossberg.com) wrote:

Another pet peeve is people who do links wrong.

"my blogging bookmarklet."

is good

"this" or "here" or "link" is not.

Compare and contrast the results in blogdex: http://blogdex.net/track.asp?id=10832204

∴ Joe Grossberg | 6-Dec-2004 4:49pm est | http://www.joegrossberg.com | #6526

Jim wrote:

I agree with Wayne. I use Firefox with the bookmarks sidebar, and horizontal space is fairly limited. It's annoying when you have a bunch of bookmarks that say "Example.com - " and then get cut off.

∴ Jim | 6-Dec-2004 6:24pm est | #6527

203.13.23.48 wrote:

Definately:

Page Name - Site Name

I'm afraid.

∴ 203.13.23.48 | 7-Dec-2004 10:47pm est | #6536

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